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Document Details : Title: Readers and Reading in Ovid's Amores 2.2 and 2.3 Author(s): LEVENTI, Maria Journal: Latomus Volume: 83 Issue: 3 Date: 2024 Pages: 488-506 DOI: 10.2143/LAT.83.3.3293728 Abstract : This paper focuses on the metapoetic role of Bagoas, the enslaved eunuch of Ovid’s Amores 2.2/2.3, as a ‘reader’ of the puella’s behavior, and thereby of Latin love elegy. Bagoas is similar to Nape in Am. 1.11/1.12, who causes the amator anxiety about alternative meanings ascribed to his work. Similarly, in 2.2 the amator holds out to Bagoas the promise of one privileged ‘reading’, while betraying his anxiety that this ‘reading’ is derivative and limited. While 2.2 is material-oriented, 2.3 is reader-oriented, or the amator’s anxiety shifts towards communication with Bagoas and the puella as an inexperienced and a too experienced reader, respectively. Any in-between reader would be more responsive to elegy than these two liminal character-readers; but the countless identities of extratextual readers may be another reason for authorial anxiety. |
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